


water in the light

by rhymae



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: & finds Mikado's staring back, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, Devotion, God Complex, M/M, Manipulation, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-デュラララ!!×２ 結 | Durarara!!x2 Ketsu, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, where Masaomi confronts the monsters in the dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-26 18:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21378238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhymae/pseuds/rhymae
Summary: Mikado says, “I’d never let this city beat me.”Like it’s a comfort instead of conquest, as if the city never unhinged its jaw just to swallow you whole.And you can only hear Izaya, laughing and laughing andlaughing, all the way across Ikebukuro, flooding the streets and locking the gates.Alternatively— in which Masaomi finds Mikado in a mirror image with a city caught in-between.
Relationships: Kida Masaomi & Orihara Izaya, Kida Masaomi/Ryuugamine Mikado
Comments: 8
Kudos: 44





	water in the light

**Author's Note:**

> History repeats itself. Somebody says this.   
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,   
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
> 
> — Richard Siken.

There are three constants you’ve learned about this city.

The first is easy. It can almost be considered a comfort for all the familiarity you have with it. 

First works like this: there has always been someone running Ikebukuro. 

Open like a show or closed behind curtains, and you don’t know when Izaya started his turn. 

Whether he usurped the seat through blackmail or something more direct like a knife in the back, but either way Izaya got here sooner than you did. 

You still aren’t sure by just how much. Maybe a decade before the Yellow Scarves or maybe a month before Mikado first messaged you again. 

It doesn’t matter now like it will later.

And it feels new— this whole ‘knowing when things will matter.’ Knowing when to step back. 

Or, rather, having a hand there to pull you away before the shock goes off. 

Which leads into the second. 

Second, that broke open like a window and shattered glass on everyone caught in the cross-fire—

When Izaya sourced the first Dollars chat-log back to Ikebukuro, he took Mikado in with it.

You like to tell yourself it was an accident. That Izaya didn’t go looking, or Mikado didn’t come on his own. 

Neither tastes right in your mouth. It’s something you’re trying to get past. 

There’s a lot you’re trying to make peace with in the past. 

And so third comes in the form of a metal bat in the head, imprinted to the scar on your forehead.

Third reads itself clear into this: If you only asked, Mikado would peel apart the city like a blueprint.

It isn’t hard to figure out, not after Mikado pulled the first trigger and how Izaya fled town for a month before returning a little more mangled than Shizuo had left him.

In fact, he makes it look _ easy _. Easier than Izaya ever did, and you couldn’t even imagine Mikado in a gang, never mind the leader of one, so it’s harder now, picturing the present sometimes with Mikado shining so bright in it, filling the fingerprints Izaya laid ground for.

Mikado talks like he wouldn’t act on it, like you haven't seen his eyes linger on alleyways or how he gets that bored, maniac look when nothing happens for too long.

But you know, now, how he could take the entire city apart in your name for the thrill of it. Or, at the very least, leave Izaya spitting up in the dust if you ever asked, ever even hinted for him to.

You don’t ask. 

But you think about it, asking Mikado. Maybe too much. Maybe more than is really healthy.

And sometimes it leaves you burning. A _ fuck it _ torn from your throat in the dark of the night when nightmares still line the walls. When the stitches across your forehead burn like they’re still new; when you wake to the sound of Mikado’s finger on the trigger. 

Because when has anything you’ve ever done in your life been considered healthy?

Asking has nothing to do with how much you think about it, or how easy you know Mikado would do it if you even hinted. 

One breath, and Izaya’s network would tumble. 

Two, and Mikado wouldn’t even blink when he started getting the calls instead. 

That thought alone is enough to convince you that you’d never really ask in the first place.

  
  


.

  
  
  


When you found him, the first time you came back, the _ way _you found him, you knew in the moment that you would never forget it.

Not with the way Mikado says, in every memory recollection, bleeding and stunned, face smudged like a shadow, “Masaomi, you’re _ back_.”

  
How he says it like a prayer, like he doesn’t look half dead lying in the alleyway at your feet.

Or, well, more like he’s torn between something you can’t see. 

Something you weren’t there for, that you missed cities away with Izaya’s voice singing in your ear. And god, it makes you sick to think about just how well all the timing fits. The calculations done just to keep you out of it. 

Caught between moments of shattered identity like these, you wonder just how deep the city got its claws into Mikado when you weren’t looking. The same can be said for either of you, but that doesn’t make it anymore of a comfort.

Mikado is smiling, and he looks like the kid you saw again after five years at the train station. 

You almost break the silence.

You almost say, _ I came back to find you_. Or, _ what the hell are you doing? _

  
  
But Mikado opens his mouth first, says, “You weren’t supposed to come back yet.” 

And all the words die on your tongue.

You almost don’t want to ask. You know you don’t want to move, not when Mikado stumbles forward and onto his feet with a light scoff, like he can't believe you're really here, mania coloring his eyes wide when he continues.

“There’s a plan now! I’ve even got extra hands.”

A laugh, cold and sharp like a knife through your back, and then: “I’m going to make everything even better than it was before, so don’t come back until I’m ready.”

There’s a million things you _ do _ have to say to _ that _ and each of them ring with _ Izaya Orihara _stuck to the ends like tar.

Too many things happen before you can convince yourself you would.

There’s a van: a gang you have no claim to snatching Mikado up before your eyes, just to trip over themselves trying to help him. 

And when Mikado doesn’t look back at you once after he makes his announcement, you stall.

You stare at your hands like it’ll wash the red off them and listen Mikado’s bruises singing to you even through the metal of the van.

You’ve never been the best at doing what you should, so you do what you’re told to: you leave. 

And it hits, again, after. On the train back, walking the streets of a foreign city to your home for the night:

How you didn’t mean to watch Mikado get beat blue in front of you. How sharp his head moved. 

You know bodies, but you didn’t think Mikado’s could move like that. You just know that it shouldn't.

Then, Mikado was just a head stuck between two masks, both of them too unfamiliar for you to even dream of placing.

When you saw Kuronuma rush in, hands moving like he was trying to juggle too many players, all of you watching as they slipped right through, you wanted to laugh so hard you would have fallen to your knees, right there with Mikado’s blood covering you.

And you know, even now, what would have followed after. How you would have fallen over yourself just enough to place Mikado steady, to build him back up again.

You wanted to scream, to be the one, for just a few seconds, to beat Mikado blue until he gets _ it_.

The trivialities of gang wars and playing as the pawn in your own nightmares. How the nightmares follow like a flood.

The hurt of it comes after you’re inside, when Saki finds you curled up in the motel room and staring at your phone like it can take you to where you aren’t sure you need to be yet. 

The feeling doesn’t completely disappear. 

Not even when you try burning it off, slipping it under the shower’s tile your knuckles mold over it.

  
  


.

  
  


Izaya has a habit of setting the lives around him on fire.

  
  
You think maybe Izaya doesn’t know how to kick it, or maybe he planted it there himself, another _ look at me! _ scheme that traipsed itself into a mouth of chaos. 

Something the city swallowed up and everyone adapted to. 

  
  
For you, it goes like this—

You start a gang, and the city sings.

  
  
You cover Ikebukuro’s streets with red, and there are rumors scattered across every server in the district.

  
  
You rip apart your own name until it stings in the throat, and Izaya, always somewhere close, always waiting _ , laughs, _miles away and secured safe behind a screen. 

You know how it works with Izaya. You thought you knew how it worked with Mikado too.

Yet, you don’t know when it turned to this— that ugly thing in the corner neither of you want to be the first to name. How Mikado’s eyes contradict his reassurances; how you are trying to learn to keep yours better.

Mikado says, “I’d never let the city beat me.” Like it’s a comfort instead of conquest; like the thing eating you both isn’t coming straight from the inside.

After everything, the guns and gang wars and too many enemies for kids like you two to rightfully have, you wonder– if you threw a mold over Izaya’s face, would Mikado’s shine back?  
  


And all you can hear is Izaya, laughing and laughing and _ laughing_, all the way across Ikebukuro, flooding the city and locking the gates. 

  
  


.

Here’s a list of reasons of why you think you came back, for the second time, a gunshot wound bleeding out of you like a promise you never intend to break:

  
  


I.)

There are only so many places you can run to with Izaya in your ear. 

You’ve circled over half of Tokyo and nearly got yourself beaten bloody for it. Saki didn’t flinch at the phone screen, and you don’t know if it was learned or never even an idea, but she never commented on it when you did. 

You take faith in the little moments of grace you are given, but you refuse to make Izaya your god.

When Izaya said, one night after another Yakuza errand fell through, when Saki wouldn’t meet your eyes, and to think how you almost didn’t answer the phone: “I think you may be interested in what the city’s shaping into.”

The message wasn’t hard to understand. 

You could hear _ city _ as synonymous with _ Mikado _, Izaya’s careful voice burning down your spine like ice. 

You’ve never been the best at cultivating grace anyway.

II.)

You can try and track it all, every pathway, every road that intersects with the name _ Orihara _burning across it, but you won’t find what you want.

Or, really, you won’t _ lose _ what you want. Because somewhere along the lines you weren’t watching, the name _ Izaya _ blurred into _ Mikado _and you bled for nothing to stop it.

Attachment festered into entanglement and there isn’t one completely absent from the other. You could hunt them each down until the streets break themselves into moonlight, but that still doesn’t guarantee you a truth. 

Maybe it’s at the cost of your own loss that kept the link at bay for so long. But if that’s what it takes to pry Mikado out of the arms of Izaya and into the hands of the city, you’ll take it.

You’d take even more, if you knew it could work.

  
  
  


III.)

When Mikado said he had the city in his palm, you were so _ sure _ it meant it had swallowed him whole. 

  
  


.

  
  


Even on his better days, Mikado still smiles like the wrong side of the city you tried so hard to pull him away from, and traces of Izaya cover the shadows like a promise.

The city is the same and new, even without you in it.

People know you, but they don’t know the _ you _you were before. There’s no yellow scarf wrapped around your neck, no slippery voice pulling your up and down body like a puppet.

It’s different. But _ different_, you are learning, can be good. Different can be the shift of Mikado’s hands to seal up the two separate lives you had, how you thought would both still run you into the ground until Mikado ran them out first.

You walk past Russia Sushi and even one month after, two and then three, it still feels like a countdown for a flying vending machine. 

Time slows down, takes itself a part in snapshots— waiting to catch a bike in passing, screaming laughter that crawls up your skin, all caught running through an alleyway. 

You don’t realize you’re holding your breath until your chest starts to ache. 

Mikado notices, of course. It makes you wonder how much about yourself Mikado sees, how much you still don’t catch. It isn’t as terrifying a thought as you should let it be.

Mikado says, standing so tall in the light that you have to blink once, twice, to keep him in focus: “I’ve got you, Masaomi.”

Then, quieter, “He’s not here.” And neither of you have to guess who he means.

You want to snap something back like, _ he’s always here. _ Or, _ I've been spit out enough times to know_. 

Or, even_: you don’t know what it’s like having two shadows on your back _. 

Because there’s never been a version of Mikado clumsy enough to know the feeling of being eaten alive. Everything you had burned into yourself from this city, Mikado already knew, and it doesn’t make you jealous in the least.

You think, more than anything, how you’d risk it all again a thousand times more to keep Mikado from ever chancing it.

So you say, instead, “I’m not afraid of him anymore.” And you almost makes yourself mean it. 

The grin on Mikado’s face splits into something soft when you bump shoulders, walking at a pace set to leave Russia Sushi and knife fights behind. 

There’s a quip burning on your tongue, one that hits a little too close to home when you frame it right on your lips, but Mikado cuts in first:

“He can’t touch you anymore.” 

Mikado tilts his head towards you, and you think of soft smiles on train tracks and empty _ Dollars _forums. How you refreshed them every two minutes for months on end in hope of an update, too many cities torn away from home.

How the boy in front of you is all the teeth, the kind you knows this city runs on, that look familiar enough to instill a form of fear that should already be there when Mikado says, “Who’s gonna stop us, anyway?” 

Like the question has an obvious answer. 

And when Mikado bumps your hands again, you remembers all the back alley interactions your weren’t there for. 

All the conversations with Izaya you weren’t privy to. The secret gang fights, whispers in the ear straight from Kuronuma’s mouth.

Something cold runs up your spine, travels through your hand until it’s squeezing Mikado’s without meaning to.

Because, you realize, maybe it is obvious. Maybe, you missed it all by choice. 

Mikado just hums, squeezes your hand back for a moment, tighter. Like he gets it.

He says, running on the breath of the city like he owns it, and maybe he does now, caught it between the soft of its teeth when you weren’t looking: “Nothing can touch us now.” 

And not for the first time, you think how Izaya didn’t win Ikebukuro in the fallout after all. That, really, it’s a game for two rather than one.

You aren’t nearly as afraid of the thought as you should be. 

  
  


.

  
  


You meant what you said, about what it may take to kill Izaya just might end up being you.

The memory still stings like sunlight, clouded by heights of the buildings determined to shadow it out. How the blood flooded over your hands, the bastard’s name jumping from your mouth like a car crash as Mikado pulled the gun at his head closer.

And how easy it would be, you think, to tear down the real monster of Ikebukuro with your own hands. Maybe a gun to seal the point home. No cost; no give. 

Mikado has a new conscience, but it still grew in crooked. You don’t remember the exact time you lost yours, but you know it was on that rooftop.

Either way, it goes like this:

  
  
The first time Mikado fired that gun, it may as well have been your own finger on the trigger. 

What followed after still burns your throat dry on the good days, and you’ve never quite stopped thinking about if it had been you Izaya took to the finish line. How much you would have given for it to have been.

You meant what you said then, even sealed the contract in how Mikado’s bruised face smeared across your knuckles.

If anything can kill Izaya, it’s going to be you.

It doesn’t count as losing when it’s Izaya’s blood on your hands.

  
  


.

  
  


You know what really runs this city.

Sometimes better than others. Though not down to a _ T_, not up close like Mikado, digging into the cracks and sifting through connections.

Before, you’d imagine the name _ Izaya Orihara _strung up in gold lights, like some far too tacky horror film. Mikado’s face in the shadows, never too far behind.

You’d never admit it, the way your stomach drowns in something cold whenever you pass fur lining in the street. How much a name can really tame a city to its knees. 

If you did, you already knows just how Mikado would smile.

How he’d say, “Masaomi,” like your name is a key to something neither of you have really found yet. 

Mikado, daring and too eager, testing the waters like he doesn’t know which version you are today: the mourner or the murder. The Yellow Scarves or the kid who watched himself as his life flushed away. 

Mikado asks like he doesn’t get it, even though you both know he gets it better than anyone else.

But he still asks like it’s simple, like the city never unhinged it’s jaw just to swallow you whole. 

  
  


. 

  
  


Izaya turns up, eventually, because that’s always how it is between you both— you try to piece what you can of your life back together, and Izaya runs through it like a minefield. 

He’s mangled, like he forgot to build himself back right, something else lost in the months after that infamous fight in the city square no one talks about like that will make it all go away.

It’s even more unnerving now, seeing Izaya as an obvious missing piece of a whole. The humanity attached to the implication.

Izaya says, teeth like razors, like Mikado’s, just before you remind yourself not to look: “It’s touching, isn’t it? What we do for others, I mean.” 

And you don’t know how he knows about why you’re here, but you know he does.

Months behind you ring like a trophy, but you still catch the blood across your knuckles in every mirror.

There’s no illusions between the two of you. What Mikado is and what Izaya led him to be might just be the same person, but you won’t buy into it that easy. 

“Someday,” you say, making your voice soft enough to carry over how the cars rush behind you in the entry of the alleyway. It makes Ikebukuro feel like a second home in the same way you know it will never be again. “I’m going to find a way to kill you, and I’m going to do it myself.”

The line isn’t worth it for the way Izaya’s resounding cackle freezes your bones, but you don’t mean it any less. 

There’s a promise signed in your own blood, coating the city thick like syrup until you deliver on it. 

You don’t act it out yet. Not with Mikado still learning how to steady it all, or how to shift it all back onto your own shoulders.

So the next time you see Shizuo Heiwajima, you pay your respects. It’s silent and from a distance, but you like to think he understands.

If he’s been chasing Izaya for over a decade like you’ve heard, than you know he will.

You bow, careful as you can, blonde over blonde, facing across the street, and you don’t stay long enough to catch the look on his face. 

  
  


.

  
  


Mikado says, too loud and voice cracking from the quiet of the streets shut out by your apartment window: “We did it.” 

And you don't think it sounds like an ending so much as a beginning. Like counting down the steps and realizing they all lead back to an absent problem.

  
  
Mikado’s eyes light like the starlit city, like Ikebukuro at night when you have to pull yourself away to keep from staring too long.

Mikado says, torn between hometown and newfound home, the name of the city’s gangs tearing up his throat like you don’t know how he could take them out in less than a day: “The city’s better now, we fixed it. You can stay for good _ and _—”

And, you think, how quick the night stalls at Mikado’s fingertips. Izaya’s voice no more than a faint whisper in your ear, now, and how you still aren't sure how you stayed away so long in the first place.

You say, careful, truth burning your tongue and only half-shrugging off the flood that comes with the feeling: “I didn’t realize the city needed a repair man in the first place.”

It’s not your best line. 

It’s not your best self you’re putting forward, but it’s what you have to give, so you give it. 

Maybe some of it was worth it, you think, the city at your fingertips by association instead of you in its palm. 

You can make a way to find peace with it, just for the way Mikado laughs.

  
  
  
  
  
  
.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> “The dream showed me how to have it again   
by being safe from it. It showed me   
sleeping in my old bed, first stars   
shining through bare ash trees.”
> 
> \- Louise Gluck, "Condo."
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed. Comments & kudos are sooo appreciated & I love them very much. You can also find me on tumblr @rhymaes.
> 
> This is at least a month late, but I can't even tell you how much I've had to read and write this semester- so, it's a wonder it's here at all.
> 
> I own nothing & again, thank you so much for reading <3


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